Watching Andy Murray ‘major torture’, says Judy

Andy Murray signs a tennis ball for a fan in Melbourne. Picture: AP

EMMA COWING

MOST of us can empathise with Judy Murray. Yesterday, the mother of Scotland’s tennis star Andy Murray said that watching her son play at the highest level of the game felt like “a mixture between nausea and a heart attack”.

The world number three served up his peculiar cocktail of gut-wrenching emotions on Friday when he eclipsed the Swiss master Roger Federer but only after five gruelling and heart-stopping – for his fans – sets to win his semi-final at the Australian Open.

Today is unlikely to be any different for Judy as she watches her 25-year-old son take on Novak Djokovic in the final of the year’s first Grand Slam tournament. Speaking ahead of the clash, she confessed: “You would hope that it would get easier all the times that you go through it but it doesn’t. It’s very tough, especially when you get to the back end of these big events.”

She added that although the match with Federer was “major torture,” she was looking forward to today’s encounter in Melbourne. “If it’s anything like the US Open Final it is going to be a great match,” she said. “I think both Novak and Andy are in the form of their lives. They are very similar players, they are great athletes and if they both play their best it could be an absolutely cracking match.”

Murray’s coach, multiple Grand Slam winner Ivan Lendl, who is credited with helping the Scot to win his first major tournament last year in the US, said the outcome of today’s match could depend on which player recovered best from earlier rounds. “It was great that he didn’t dawdle around in the earlier matches when he was in control and finished them, and most likely it can only help,” Lendl said.

If Murray wins today it will make him the only tennis player in history to follow up a Grand Slam win with a consecutive second title.